'Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable' : Sakini, in "The Tea House of the August Moon" by John Patrick, (1953)

Monday, May 21, 2018

Jessica Valenti - The recent mass shootings in the US all have one thing in common: misogyny

The massacre at Santa
Fe high school last week that left 10 people dead – most of them students –
seems to have something in common with so many other mass shootings that happen
in the US: misogyny. The shooter, one
victim’s mother claims, targeted her daughter as the first victim because
she rejected his continued harassing advances. How many more
tragedies have to happen before we recognize that misogyny kills?

The longer we
ignore the toxic masculinity that underlies so many of these crimes, the more
violence we’re enabling. Sadie Rodriguez told
the LA Times that her daughter Shana Fisher “had four months of problems” from
the Santa Fe shooter. “He kept making
advances on her and she repeatedly told him no.” A week before the shooting,
she says, her daughter stood up to the shooter and “embarrassed him in class”.

This comes not even a
month after the van
attack in Toronto that killed 10 people and injured 13 more – violence
enacted by a man who was reportedly furious that women wouldn’t sleep with him.
Before that there was the 2015
shooting at an Oregon college by a young man who complained of being a
virgin with “no girlfriend”. In 2014, there was Elliot
Rodger, who killed six people and left behind a 140-page sexist manifesto
and videos where he warned: “I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me
but I will punish you all for it.” In 2009, George Sodini killed three women at
a gym in Pennsylvania after lamenting online
that younger women wouldn’t date him.